


Annie Get Your Gun

by Becky_Blue_Eyes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: A mix of EU and canon and original ideas, Alternate Canon, BAMF Mara Jade, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Rebellion, The Force Is Weird (Star Wars), The Mandalorian (TV) References, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28297719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Becky_Blue_Eyes/pseuds/Becky_Blue_Eyes
Summary: Mara Jade is no different than millions of other little girls in the galaxy. She loves her family; she has her talents; and she would gladly see the Empire burn to ash for all it has done to her world. If that means she must shoot her way to get it, then all the better.Or how the Little Sure Shot of the Stars earned her name. A Star Wars AU where I take a bunch of concepts from the EU and canon and smash them together with original ideas. Sharpshooter!Mara, seamstress!Mara, and eventual Luke Skywalker/Mara Jade.
Relationships: Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	Annie Get Your Gun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wingsofthenight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingsofthenight/gifts).



> Dedicated to wingsofthenight for convincing me to post this publicly lol

_The giant gas plant of Shiraxi in the star system of the same name has a large, inhabited moon that orbits it and its yellow sun: Hisuiin, the Garden Moon. Composed of four allied nations sharing similar cultures and languages, Hisuiin during the Old Republic was a relatively overlooked world in the Mid Rim of the galaxy. Then the Clone Wars came for its wealth of natural resources; then the Empire came to assert its control over the stubborn Hisuiinans. By the fall of the Empire and the rise of the New Republic, the Garden Moon had seen its share of civil war and heartbreak, and millions of lives lost to conflicts originating elsewhere. Yet its peoples, its forested mountains and its endless fields of iridescent flowers and multicolored tea survived. Some notable natives even thrived to make names for themselves, such as the famous Mara Jade, the Little Sure Shot of the Stars._

* * *

Contrary to popular belief, the Little Sure Shot of the Stars is not born with a blaster in her hands. Rather instead, Mara Jade’s first toy is a miniature drop spindle.

There are a thousand Jades who live on Hisuiin, the name as unremarkable as the Nguyets or the Satos or the Youngs. But nestled against the slopes of the high mountains where mist descends every morning in a cool shimmer before it evaporates in the golden sunlight, Mara grows up in the pedestrian city of Ujin where the Jade family are weavers. Weavers, seamstresses, tailors—there is little they cannot do with a needle and thread.

Mara’s first memories are of her mother Yitsana sewing by the window opening over the city, with its slender frames of silk-paper and cool grey stone growing like roots beneath the towering green trees. Music would lilt in through the warm humid breeze, and Yitsana would sing along and make up ballads for Mara to giggle and ooh at. In these memories there is only light, and love, and the assurance that nothing terrible would ever touch Mara’s life.

But alas, it already had. How many of Mara’s relatives died in the Clone Wars? Jades came a dime a dozen across the Garden Moon and they were spent poorly in a war that had nothing to do with them. Her darling grandmother Miriang has a book of names with thin red lines cutting through those who no longer laugh with them, take tea with them, live and mourn with them. Perhaps it is a blessing that Yitsana never married Mara’s father, as he surely would’ve died anyway and left her a widow bereft of comfort. And then when the Empire came to put an end to the fighting once and for all, when the Jedi were purged from the galaxy and with them the uncle that Mara never got to meet…it is more than her family can bear.

When Miriang discovers that Mara too is Force-sensitive, she is firm in her handling. No one must ever know. If they never find out, they will never take Mara away to her death, like her uncle before her, and all the poor souls who disappeared under Imperial rule. So Mara grows up never knowing what may have been in a hundred different life times, and never knowing a family without quiet grief.

Instead, Mara grows up learning how to weave silk, how to embroider linen, how to spin hemp and flax into yarn. She knows the difference between brewing delicate high mountain white tea in warm water and hardy valley blue tea in hot water before she’s old enough to be trusted around the boiling kettle. She plays sabacc in the courtyard with old aunties and uncles from around the neighborhood and they teach her how to lie with her smiles. All the children in Ujin from the time they can walk are taught the traditional dances of the Hisuiinans, the Orchid Waltz and the Ice Flower Fan Dance and the Tea Picker’s Reel and a hundred others, because their elders refuse to let their cultures die beneath the boot of the Empire. Mara learns to walk and talk at her mother’s hands, and together they bake bread and sing songs and name the stars glittering in the night sky alongside the bright smear of the galactic center.

Yitsana kisses her forehead and Mara knows she is loved.

No, it is not until she is eight that Mara first shoots the blaster she is known for. Because that is when an Imperial officer decides to kill her mother.

* * *

It happens on a cool winter night. It never snows on the Garden Moon, not even on the highest of the mountain tops where ruins of coral-stone temples devoted to forgotten forest gods catch the earliest of the morning dew. Bedtime stories say that the natives of the Garden Moon are descended from dryad women who sheltered refugee humans and Twi’leks in their glittering trees. Whatever it may be, women are as equal as men here, they see and talk without censure. On that cool winter night, bundled in homespun linen to rival the best of what Coruscanti merchants have to offer, Yitsana sees much.

Yitsana sees Overseer Blaine Shailoh harass a group of farmers with Shailoh’s stormtroopers. When she demands they fall to their knees and hand over their goods—a convoy’s worth of priceless iridescent roses, the rarest in the galaxy—and the farmers refuse, Shailoh demands the troopers open fire. Yitsana hurries home, but not quickly enough, not quietly enough. And she immediately tells Ujin’s circle of leaders what she saw, how they must be more cautious in their cultivating fields.

For those who knew her, they are not surprised by Yitsana’s bold courage. It takes that courage to raise a daughter alone on a world where first droids, then clones, then Imperial forces make parenthood less than easy. Mara gets most of what she is from her mother, her ramrod straight back and extreme precision in all that she sets her mind to. Her humor, her independence, her refusal to let injustice lie.

And so in a terrible way it is fitting that Mara witnesses Shailoh herself corner Yitsana in the Jade family’s cloth shop at the darkest hour of night. Yitsana is just barely returned from the circle, she still has her travelling cloak over her shoulders, and Mara is still pouring tea for her mother. Shailoh chirps a cheerful greeting and aims a blaster at her head. Yitsana does not beg for her life, she does not cower. Instead, she screams at Mara to run and dies shielding Mara’s escape.

Mara wants to scream when she watches her mother die, she wants to throw herself on the ground and wail. But there are stormtroopers flooding into her home, and she needs to tell Miriang and her family to flee into the mountains. Yitsana’s own blaster, a tiny antique thing that she couldn’t draw before her life was snuffed out, is still in the drawer with the spare drop spindles and goldwork thread. Mara grabs the blaster and runs.

She steals up the stairs, avoiding the creaking spots and moving quickly so that her steps do not linger in any given step too long. She makes it to her cousins Ilse and Genjin and watches them jump out the window to safety. She makes it to her old uncle Aerun and helps him down the back stairs. Cousins, second cousins, adopted aunts; all the Jades scatter into the night. But when Mara enters her grandmother’s room, there is already a stormtrooper there demanding Miriang to her feet.

Mara does not hesitate. She hardly thinks as she raises the blaster, aims it at the joint where the trooper’s helmet made an imperfect fit to his shoulder armor. Someone must not have tailored it properly, or maybe it is secondhand. Either way, Mara is a seamstress before much else, and before a seamstress she is an orphan with furious tears streaming down her cheeks. She shoots, and the blaster bolt curves to exactly where she imagines it to be, as if she has seen it happen before, as if there is a force pulling it along as she wills. She shoots and the trooper crumples dead.

“Grandmama!” Mara chokes out.

“My darling,” Miriang murmurs. “May the stars protect you.”

* * *

Shailoh is reassigned to a different world, from what Mara discovers in the aftermath. Her corruption eventually catches up with her and she goes renegade to corner the black markets of the Mid Rim. That gives Mara no closure, no comfort, not when her mother is dead and her family hiding across the Garden Moon. Only she and Miriang remain in Ujin after the dust settles, only they remain to weave and to sew and to tailor and to grieve.

Her grandmother tilts up her chin, wipes away her tears, and kisses her forehead. Then she presses a brand-new blaster into Mara’s hands, and tells her that she shall be no Jedi. After all, Jedi do not use these sorts of weapons. They will never see her coming.

Mara trains, day and night, by throwing objects in the air and shooting them before they hit the ground. First clay plates, then steel wool, then leaves and wisps of silk. She sits beneath the heavy yellow planet glowing above the horizon and trains her sight on little fire ants crawling between the branches of the banyan trees. She tracks them, she feels the strain in her eyes grow until something gives in inches and she can see farther than ever. She sees, she hears, she feels life flickering all around her. The Garden Moon is so alive even in the dark, even in the quiet courtyard where the village dead lie cremated in delicate vases of porcelain and silver.

It is the Force, Miriang tells her. The Force runs in their family, sometimes louder than others, and Mara is as blinding as the child Miriang gave away. Mara must be careful not to shine too brightly, lest the Empire come and disappear her. But she can channel it, use it for her talents, and none shall ever defeat her. Mara wants to ask her grandmother what her uncle’s name was. She is desperate to ask. But she never does, because when Mara shoots a glass pendant off a target from a hundred feet away she sees the heartbreak in her grandmother’s eyes. How many children has Miriang lost, how many grandchildren? And who is Mara to add to her grief?

She does not ask. Instead Mara readies her aim, and imagines Shailoh standing within reach. Stormtroopers who antagonize the good people of Ujin are a decent stand in.

Shooting is easy compared to sewing, after all. Mara knows how to remain still, perfectly so, and wait for a target to walk into her line of sight. She knows where the weak points in their armor are, where the shatterpoints of their metal alloys and the fraying edges of their underclothes are. From a hundred feet away she ends the reign of terror shot by shot, pawn by pawn in the great game of the Empire. The Colonial Governor of Hisuiin sends more troops, sends TIE-fighters to terrorize. She shoots the Imperial bastards regardless, and raids them of all their durasteel.

Sewing, on the other hand, requires movement. Finesse. Her hands always have a little shake to them just from her heartbeat. But she is her mother’s daughter, and a Jade from a line of thousands. Is all of life not one mighty tapestry, constantly being unraveled and woven and embroidered? The Force feels like that to her, like a trillion silk threads connecting every tree and worm and tea picker and the Emperor himself. Mara is a sharpshooter, and she is a seamstress. And she sits before a forge in the hearth where the boiling kettle ought to be.

Mara inhales. She exhales. She melts durasteel in the hearth. Only titanium and beskar are stronger, and this shall suit her needs. Inhale, exhale, a thousand trillion strands of life and light from each of her fingertips. She raises her hands, and the metal raises. Inhale, exhale. She pulls the metal thinner. Thinner. Inhale, exhale, thinner. So thin that she can embroider silk with it. And upon her spinning wheel she spins, and spins, inhaling and exhaling and thrumming with the power of the Force.

When she is finished, Mara collapses onto the floor. Cold sweat soaks into her dress, and she can hardly breathe past the mind-aching exhaustion. But from the corner of her eye she sees spools of durasteel thread. Light as silk, flexible as linen, and able to withstand the worst of blaster fire.

No one shall ever be orphaned by blaster fire again. Never again. That she swears on her mother’s grave, and falls unconscious there before the roaring hearth.

When she awakens, Miriang hands her a cup of hot blue tea to soothe the bone-dry burn in her throat. A bowl of ginger rice porridge and a plate of spring green lumpia to fill the emptiness aching in her middle. She hugs Mara tight to her chest, and Mara grieves for the future her mother will never get to see.

* * *

By the time she reaches adulthood, Mara is the image of Hisuiinan beauty. Dark red hair in short waves to her chin, a soft moon-round face and light golden skin, and vivid green eyes. Jade is the best name for the color of her eyes. Jade, and the mountains shimmering under the summer sun, and the envy of her peers. For her part, Mara only envies those who have their families whole, and devotes her life to keep it that way.

Her durasteel cloaks are nearly as famous as her sharpshooting. For she is not the only citizen of the Garden Moon who have their eyes trained on the shatterpoints of the Imperial overlords. From little children playing in jasmine fields, to Hisuiinan-Twi’leks draping durasteel cloth over their lekku, to steely-eyed Clone Wars veterans fighting in a revolt. Revolt, turns to rebellion, turns to Civil War with the Empire and the Rebel Alliance feeding each side. And Mara spins her cloaks until her nose bleeds from the strain, she shoots until her hands spasm from the repetition.

Mara Jade earns her stripes, and her infamy.

They never truly connect little Mara Jade the seamstress with the vicious woman with a hundred blasters at her belt. Some call her the Siren of the Siyuan Mountains, named for the battlefield where the Imperials first realized she was not some mere troublemaker. Others call her the Red Bitch, for her flaming red hair and her love of shooting dead any and all the Empire throws at her. But most of all, they call her the Little Sure Shot of the Stars. She earns this name when she kills the Colonial Governor.

The Governor’s mansion laid in the heart of Hisuiin, in the great city of Miyaco that Mara never saw before in her life. Towering buildings of half titanium and half redwood trunk, glass painted in a thousand shades to match the rows and rows of iridescent flowers lining the winding canals. The stars were invisible due to the day glow against the night sky, and music came from every half-opened window. Mara never felt so isolated as to stand there surrounded by a million strangers milling about in beautiful clothing and anxious fear. Mara is a dancer sometimes, nothing to earn a name for but enough to pretend her way into the mansion. It’s the governor’s life day, and she is there to perform for him with a hundred other beauties.

Her mother’s blaster is tiny enough to fit in the folds of Mara’s skirts without attracting attention. And it is not made of any common metal alloy that Imperial scanners would pick up. It is made of hardened coral-stone, and heart jadewood, and magnetic ore. Mara smiles sweetly with her full lips painted red and the idiot security hardly gives her more than a leer. She is almost offended; her giant full skirts compliment her waist, and she sewed the glittering goldwork on her blouse herself. The Red Bitch of Hisuiin deserves a bit more offense, surely.

The other dancers let her into their routine with little fanfare. Tonight they shall do the Dance of the Nine Veils. It is somewhat vulgar for her tastes, as she was raised in the countryside where there was little need for raising sheer petticoats up and above her head for the enjoyment of strangers. But the Governor is sitting there in the center seat, with a Twi’lek slave at his feet. There is such smugness in his eyes, such self-satisfaction at the degradation of multiple peoples. Mara’s own eyes sharpen, and she feels the Force pulsate around her. She holds herself back, she opens her silk fan and steps into line with the other women. Not yet.

She spins, and her skirts flare up and the musicians play dulcimers and winding flutes until the music melts and weeps against the walls. Higher and higher the skirts fly, louder and louder the filthy Imperial pigs cheer. Tighter and tighter the Governor holds the slave by her neck.

Part of the dance is for the dancers to look into a hand mirror like little coquettes, unknowing that their entire back is bared to the audience. Mara smiles. Through her mirror she sees the Governor’s face perfectly, sees the hideous mark of his arrogance. She lets her blouse fall to the swell of the music, and in the distraction, she lifts her blaster up from her pocket and rests it on her shoulder. He still doesn’t notice. Shame.

Through her mirror’s view, Mara sees her blaster aim true and strike him right in his face.

The slave woman does not scream. Instead she grabs the ceremonial sword from the dead man’s side and cuts down the Imperial bastards closest to her. The entire mansion hall falls into chaos as half the Hisuiinans escape for their lives, and the other half decide to become rebels right then and there. Someone cuts the lights to the mansion, which triggers lights cutting out over the entire capital. So there, finally illuminated in the starlight, Mara smiles down on the corpse of her enemy. They don’t even know her real name and yet they know the might of her blaster. A surer shot has never been fired before, not once in the whole galaxy. And so Little Sure Shot of the Stars she becomes, and she revels in the fear it strikes in the heart of the Empire.

* * *

Mara spends more time travelling across the Garden Moon to aid the Rebels than she ever thought she would. From the purple volcanoes of Silladera where rice and wine grow alongside pink lakes and sifting ash; to the crowded colorful streets of Baikiling where she reunites with some of her cousins; to the haunted forests of Tysh where no one lives anymore. Not after the Empire came and executed ten thousand people and left them to rot in open graves.

Her world is so much larger than she ever thought to dream of, and yet it is still so small compared to the galaxy. How many must die because of the Empire’s greed? Mara vowed no more orphans, and yet how many orphans must pass through even little Ujin’s courtyards? Perhaps if there were Mandalorians to take in foundlings, Hisuiin could found an entire planet’s worth of Mandalorians. But there are no more left after their own purge, or so Mara heard as a child.

She learns she is wrong when she meets one for herself.

He is taller than her, with broader shoulders and thicker legs and immediately she is on edge just from the physicality. But the Force’s tapestry of links collecting her to every other living creature does not thrum with danger. It thrums with quiet similarity. Kinship. There he stands in the circle of tents that the pro-Rebel faction has set up in this weeping rainforest outside of Goa’goa, with the ever-present drizzle condensing on his shiny beskar armor, and he is polite enough to let her into her tent first. Mara has only handled beskar once before in her life, a locket hanging from a dead Imperial’s neck after she shot him in the chest. She buried him with it, as it had a portrait of a family within, and struck quiet shame into her heart. She hopes there is no shame associated with his armor.

He tilts his head, and he asks, “Are you the Jade seamstress?”

“I am a Jade, and I am a seamstress, so perhaps.” It is not every day someone asks for her sewing skills rather than her shooting. She dares to smile. “How may I help you?”

He wants one of her durasteel cloaks. A wise investment, especially for a Mandalorian when there ought not be anymore. She has enough durasteel cloth with her to sew a few cloaks, and she could use the credits to acquire more durasteel or perhaps even titanium alloy. “I will need to measure you, I will not take long.” He nods and she gets to work. Mara does not touch him directly, as he does not seem the type to enjoy it. Instead she asks, “Would you like some tea? This forest is known for its red ginger root, and there’s nothing else like it.”

“…yes, thank you.” He does not drink the tea in front of her. Ah, Mandalorians never take off their helmets, do they? So she turns her back on him, and gets to sewing in her private tent. When she returns with a rough start, the teacup is empty.

The teacup is empty, and they are under attack.

She grabs the closest blaster in the tent—a giant brutal thing modeled after a Wookie’s bowcaster—and trips out of the tent. She curses herself, there’s no less than two dozen stormtroopers and three snipers! How could she have not seen them coming?! She snarls and shoots a trooper in the throat, and another in their armpit. Circle around the perimeter, shoot them all dead, she’s too close for comfort and she must retreat.

Mara ends up pressed against the Mandalorian and covers his six. The troopers aren’t doing too well, such a shame; they must not have known she was here. His blaster jams and he leans down to reload it. She doesn’t see the sniper lock their sight on him, as she’s facing the wrong way. But she sees them, just as she can see for miles if she focuses hard enough. She feels them in the tapestry woven through her body. So Mara flips her blaster to rest on her shoulder over his head and fires. The sniper’s gun explodes in their face, and the Mandalorian startles. “Little Sure Shot,” he hisses through his helmet, and Mara must keep from snorting. He knew her for a seamstress and not a sharpshooter! Isn’t that a first?

Later, she sits back in her tent. She could use a cup of red ginger root tea, she could use a towel to wipe the enemy’s blood from her hair. That was a messy kill, a trooper came too close for comfort and she had to shoot them point blank in the eye. Mara bites her lip so she does not shudder. She can’t think about the way they oozed out of their helmet. She can’t think about the blood. She can’t think about if they have a grandmother waiting for them to come home. Her hands are clean and steady and she has work to do. And that’s what really matters in the end, doesn’t it?

The man watches her work like a silent guard. Mara asks if he needs any embroidery. He is quiet for a long moment before he declines. Instead he asks, “How much for each cloak?”

“I mainly charge by the bolt of fabric. 100 credits for each bolt, and 20 credits to cover the construction.” She tilts her head. Blood trickles down her temple, or perhaps it is just the rain. “Of course, if you prefer to pay in raw durasteel or titanium alloy I’ll take that instead.” It is harder for her to find time to scavenge for metal when she is hip deep in the rebellion.

“And what if I give you beskar?”

Mara blinks. She opens her mouth and waits for him to say he’s joking. When he does not, she closes her mouth and swallows. “One ingot would make one cloak for an adult of your height, or two for a child. But I can’t imagine ever making one, beskar is…” It is the rarest metal in the whole galaxy. So smooth, so perfect—she swore the Force sang when she held that dead man’s locket, it sings whenever she looks at the Mandalorian’s armor.

The Mandalorian hands her five ingots. Mara gasps. Five! “Make ten cloaks. Things are getting unsafe the longer this rebellion goes on. Those who cannot defend themselves need better protection.”

He’s commissioning her for cloaks for children. Mandalorian foundlings. Her heart squeezes at the thought of children being shot at, orphans being put in danger. She nods, and must dig her nails into her palms so she doesn’t tear up instead. “I—of course. Of course.” She pauses. “May I ask how did you find me? There’s not many on the Garden Moon who can do such a commission, and I don’t have a set location.” The poor fools who met their doom in her sight today would never have faced her with a mere two dozen had they known the Siren haunted this rainforest.

His helmet tilts to the side. “Your grandmother told me where you were. She said you ought to come home more often if she must send a bounty hunter to find you.”

For the first time in months, Mara laughs. She laughs, and she mourns for home.

* * *

She hands him the cloaks the day she is to leave for another Imperial stronghold. The beskar cloaks are like liquid in the pale morning light, even lighter than the durasteel cloak she’s fitted around his shoulders. Ten children shall never know the fear of blasters, or even plasma ion. Ten orphans will sleep easier now, easier than Mara has in ages.

It is an impulse when she asks if he’d rather track down someone for her rather than pay for credits. “Blaine Shailoh owes me a great debt and I’d like to see her repay it.” Mara will not meet his gaze, and her words are very quiet beneath the haunting sound of rain fall. “Warm or cold, I don’t really care.”

“I’ll see it done.”

And with that he is gone, and Mara wonders if she’s dreamt it.

A month passes with the civil war bleeding strong. Mara returns to Ujin to try to wash her hands clean in the hot springs bubbling in the mountains. She is so tired from shooting and shooting and feeling people die. Even if she never sees the bodies hit the ground, she feels them die through the Force and it keeps her up at night. When will it end? She rests her head on her grandmother’s lap and squeezes her eyes tight until she cannot keep the tears back. Miriang sings to her, as her mother used to, but sleep eludes Mara.

Then one day the Mandalorian returns. Just long enough to throw a battered but still warm Shailoh at her feet. Mara can barely force out, “I shall sing your praises for all my life,” the highest thank-you she can possibly give. He nods at her and her heart shakes, and he leaves her to her repaid debt.

Indeed, she shall adore him all her life, for finally doing what she could not.

Mara’s mother, bold and brave Yitsana Jade, and all the others who suffered beneath Shailoh’s cruelty—they are avenged that day. With Shiraxi looming dull through the overcast sky, the circle of leaders sentence Shailoh to death. And with the hateful woman spitting curses from a wall, Mara lines up her shot.

Mara never misses. But she aims at a non-lethal spot for her first shot, just to give the bitch a taste of what shall come for her. Shailoh screams in agony and Mara gets the first taste of what the Dark Side of the Force could mean for her. Then she shoots Shailoh between the eyes for a quick death, and spends the entire night shaking and shivering. She has nightmares where her eyes are red as blood and pus, where she laughs over mountains of corpses as all the Garden Moon rots beneath her feet.

All she can wonder is when did the Little Sure Shot take over Mara Jade’s entire life.

* * *

It isn’t until Mara’s been wading neck deep through blood for years until she meets the leaders of the Rebel Alliance. Hisuiin, after all, is just Mid Rim; nowhere special. But soon after the destruction of the Death Stari war surged on the Garden Moon once more. This time merely a few miles from Ujin itself, down in the valley where the air is hot and thick with sticky summer humidity. Mara, still giddy with vicious victory from the Death Star turning to particles in the Yavin system, is in full form. The Force is a great tapestry and she but its humble seamstress, and with every twitch of her finger she cuts and knots the ties of life to the Imperial bastards.

TIE-fighters and X-wings scream above her head and the greenery is blinding against the shine of the sun and Shiraxi. Everything seems to glow brighter than usual, brighter and bolder and bloodier. Mara hardly needs to open her eyes when she shoots anymore, she can see where her bolts land before she even fires. Instead she must focus on peace, and joy, and comfort, rather than the bloodlust brimming and boiling beneath the surface. How easy it would be to fall into that darkness, to become death itself before any more orphans weep in the courtyards of her youth. How easy it would be, how easy…

She spins to a stop, with the wind blowing her hair in her face and her tunic against her ammo belt. Mara scans the battle field for snipers to take down before her allies are hurt, for anyone needing her to cover their backs, for—

And she gasps, because she locks her gaze on the biggest blue eyes she’s ever seen, and the Force sings so loudly that she goes deaf.

Is that…is that Luke Skywalker? The man who took down the Death Star? Empire’s Bane, Hero of the Rebel Alliance, a Jedi. A Jedi!

He opens his mouth to say something, and in the glare of the sun she sees enemy fire rain down towards his back. Mara runs forward. She knocks him over, the blaster fire just barely missing over their heads. She unpins her own durasteel cloak and drapes it over his back. Then she pushes her hair back from her face, and yells, “Don’t just stand around here like an idiot! This is no place to be shot!”

Of course, that is when she is shot in the upper arm. Mara shrieks and shoots down the nasty bitch who finally figured out how to aim straight. Then she runs back into the fight, climbing a tree and firing sure and true across the mountain valley.

When the dust clears, the Imperials have retreated and the Rebels are chasing them clear back to Miyaco. Mara rips a strip of linen from her under tunic and winds it around her bleeding arm before taking stock of the casualties. Can Ujin shelter them all? At least they have enough blue tea to supply all of the Core Worlds with so they will not be rude hosts. She wipes the sweat from her face and wants to drown herself in a hot spring. A long soak, and a bucket of rosemary oil and rice wine lotion. Maybe then she’ll feel more like Mara and less like the Red Bitch. But first, triage and tea.

And that is how she ends up serving Princess Leia Organa, Commander Han Solo and the famous Luke Skywalker in her living room. Leia is the soul of courtesy and Mara might just pinch herself. A real-life princess! Heroes of the Rebellion! And a Jedi like who Mara may have been in a different life; for all she knows, the Emperor himself might drop in for a social call!

Miriang stares Luke with nostalgic eyes, and Mara’s cousin Ilse darns the blaster frayed holes in their jackets. “Miss,” Luke says and his voice is just like the sunshine refracting through the window. How can someone who has seen as much death and destruction as Mara sound like that? “Thank you, you saved my life.”

“Think nothing of it.” He offers her the durasteel cloak back, and he’s taken the care to fold it up nicely. It’s enough to make her smile. “Keep it, you may need it more than I do.”

“Especially when you aren’t covering his back.” Han grins at Luke. “What was it she said? This is not place for an idiot to be shot down in?”

Miriang raps Mara’s knuckles with the hearth poker for being abominably rude to an ally. Ilse, Han and Leia laugh, and Luke flushes, and Mara…

Well, for the first time in a long while, Mara remembers what she’s fighting for: this fragile joy of serving tea in her living room with the windows open and the summer breeze lilting in music, and everything laughing instead of grieving. What she would give to protect this joy for every soul on Hisuiin, and all over the galaxy. Bit by bit, the darkness in her heart recedes in the face of idle talk, and growing friendship, and bright blue eyes.

* * *

Mara wears her finest gown when they take Miyaco.

Miriang gives her heirloom jade earrings and bangles to make the Jade name proud. Mara, in a red silk gown resplendent with golden brocade and jewel-toned flower embroidery, wields a blaster made of rose titanium and iridescent durasteel. She is a vision, Siren and Red Bitch and Little Sure Shot all bundled together like a forgotten god. And she fires her blaster at her target: the fuse to a series of bombs. In a flash all the remaining Imperial monuments on the Garden Moon explode into dust, and thousands scream in hard fought victory.

Victory. Hisuiin is freed of all Imperial forces and traitors. No more orphans, no more open pits of rotting corpses. No, all is left is to pick up the pieces after the dust settles, and mourn for the millions lost…

But that can wait. For now, Mara drinks, and dances, and sings beneath the star light, and dreams of blue eyes and beskar and all the time she has now. Time to make new friends and meet the ones she already has. Time to finally upgrade her family storefront. Time to see the other worlds beyond the Shiraxi system. All the time in the galaxy, all the time she has left.

Victory. It’s so beautiful that she weeps.

* * *

“His name was Van.”

Mara turns to her grandmother, who looks out the window. Miriang smiles, despite the tears spilling down her wrinkled face. Mara kisses her cheek and leans her head on her shoulder. “That’s a lovely name.”

“He was a lovely boy. I see much of him in you, and I am so proud of you both.”

Beyond the window, Ujin and the mountains spill out before them. It is peaceful, it is quiet. Mara hopes that her uncle Van’s spirit can rest easy now, his and her mother’s and all the rest.

* * *

She does not know who is coming to visit her that unremarkable spring day. She is swamped in orders for wedding gowns and baby clothes, and nothing is more enjoyable than setting aside her blaster for a spindle and thimble. Oh, the Little Sure Shot of the Stars is far from finished from her business—she knows that there’s still the Imperial remnant clinging to power after the Emperor’s death and Hisuiin was a bit of a testy place regardless. But for now, she is just a Jade at her work.

When the door opens with a bell ring, she says without looking up, “Welcome! Are you here for order or for pick up?”

“For a return.”

Mara startles and drops her needle. She spins in her chair and there is Luke standing in her shop, dressed in muted black but his eyes bright blue as ever. He smiles, and she smiles back. Then he offers her the durasteel cloak once again, this time wrapped up nicely in paper and a bow. “This has saved my life more than not, but it feels unfair I’ve taken it from you without so much as a thank you.” He grins wider. “And I’m afraid I’m still a bit of an idiot, but I’m working on being shot at.”

Mara giggles into her palm. She’s just in a shapeless smock today, hardly the battle vision he saw last. And they’re both a bit older, and a bit worn down. But he’s still smiling, and she’s not that busy, is she? No, she has all the time in the galaxy still. “Well, if you insist on thanking me.” She stands and sets aside her work. “I have a few errands to run down by the river. Care to escort me, Master Jedi?”

“Of course, Miss Sharpshooter.” He takes her offered arm. She’s half a head taller than him, and yet he makes a nice fit in her arm.

“Call me Mara,” she murmurs. Just Mara today.

“Mara,” he says, and she shivers. Just Mara. Not a sharpshooter, not a seamstress, just her. How wonderful. “As long as you call me Luke.”

She tests his name on her tongue. She decides she won’t mind saying it more often.

And then they walk out into the spring day. Her, and a young man with the brightest eyes she’s ever seen, and the sun glimmering on the river and the iridescent roses, and no obligations pressing on them for today.

* * *

Contrary to popular belief, the Little Sure Shot of the Stars is not born with a Jedi Master’s ring on her finger. Rather instead, Mara Jade decides to walk with Luke Skywalker on an unremarkable day. History, as it always does, comes later.

* * *

An idea of what Mara Jade looks like:

Photo of Annie Oakley/the Little Sure Shot of the Wild West shooting over her shoulder, aka the Little Sure Shot of the Star’s most famous blaster trick:

**Author's Note:**

> And that is my overly long oneshot! I was really disappointed when they didn’t add Mara Jade to the new SW canon, so I decided to take her character and reinvent her into something I would’ve liked to see. And apparently what I really want is Annie Oakley who can make mithril cloaks and looks like she stepped out of 30s Shanghai.
> 
> Hisuiin is a mish-mash of East Asian and South East Asian cultures, primarily Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines with some Korean and Vietnamese influence. Unlike most other worlds in the galaxy, there is no one ruler of the Garden Moon; instead, it’s a union of several nations that sends a collective set of ambassadors to the Senate.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this! I plan to do another story in this AU that shows Mara and Luke’s growing relationship and eventual marriage, but with the way my work schedule is (I work retail… in a pandemic… hoo boy I hate it) I’m not sure when that story will come.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
